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The Handmaid’sTale The Handmaid’s Tale represents Schlöndorff’s first feature-length contribution to the science fiction genre, but it also continues some of his earlier thematic and structural preoccupations. It is one of a number of works exploring, both in print and in screen adaptations that usually followed the novels, the science fiction subgenre that portrays dystopian societies in the future. Among the most famous literary works of this genre are George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. In writing the novel on which the film was based, Margaret Atwood saw herself as extending this literary genre. Beginning with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) and William Cameron Menzies’s Things to Come (1936), up to more recent works such as François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985), filmmakers have used this same genre to provide both entertainment and commentary on their present-day societies. Schlöndorff himself toyed with this approach in his contribution to the omnibus film War and Peace (1983). Within the dystopian genre, however, Schlöndorff in The Handmaid’s Tale manages to pick up and rework a number of ideas, ideological concerns, and rhetorical and poetic strategies that have characterized much of his earlier work. In many ways, The Handmaid’s Tale represents a return to the Schlöndorff of the 1970s in its focus on a woman’s right to personal and sexual fulfillment. Writers and filmmakers have long used science fiction as a way to present relatively abstract ideas about society. Many critics have also argued that science fiction works, although set in the future, are always about the society in which they are produced. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is part of this tradition. Atwood’s view of the future involves a feminist concern with the role of women and with issues of sexual equality and reproductive rights. She presents a world in which the radical religious right has transformed North American society. She creates for liberal readers an embodiment of their worst 22 247 nightmares of conservative backlash against civil rights, feminism, sexual revolution , and the ideal of personal freedom. Atwood’s approach to depicting an oppressive, totalitarian state is a familiar one. Her originality lies in her applying this familiar vision of the future to the concerns of women and feminists. In terms of themes, The Handmaid’s Tale confronts issues of fascism, patriarchy , conformity, individualism, and rebellion already explored in Schlöndorff’s German-made films. The film continues the director’s struggle to come to terms with the political past of Germany at the same time as it presents a skeptical view of a potential neofascist societal evolution in America. In terms of form, it extends Schlöndorff’s involvement with episodic story structures , with questions of point of view and subjectivity, and with the look as a mechanism of power. As a work based on a novel by one of North America’s most prestigious woman writers, The Handmaid’s Tale also continues Schlöndorff’s involvement in literary adaptation. The story is set at around the turn of the twenty-first century. Kate (Natasha Richardson), her husband, and her small daughter are attempting to flee their North American homeland after a right-wing fundamentalist coup. But border guards intercept them, kill the husband, and cart off Kate and her daughter separately . Along with a mass of other women and minority prisoners, Kate is subjected to a selection process. Pollution has rendered the majority of Gilead’s women sterile. Having passed a fertility test, Kate is interned along with other handmaids who are to assure the continuation of the Gilead elite. After extended indoctrination, drills, and brainwashing, the handmaids are placed with individual families. Commander Fred (Robert Duvall) and his wife Serena Joy (Faye Dunaway) “adopt” Kate, who henceforth will be addressed as Offred. The Commander directs the ongoing war against the rebels in the mountains. The ultraconservative Christian Gileadites have legitimized by Biblical rituals the triangular relationship of husband, wife, and biological handmaid-mother. The veiled wife is supposed to be present whenever the male attempts to impregnate the surrogate mother. When repeated intercourse fails to produce pregnancy, Serena suspects the Commander’s sterility and arranges a liaison between Kate and Nick (Aidan Quinn), the Commander’s chauffeur. The Commander also infringes on the rules by secretly taking Kate out...

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